April 10, 2007

Content is King, Context is Queen

Last week, I tried to relate some of the most compelling
ideas that came out ofthe Seoul deep dive on media and content. Of course, and as always, I lost a few things
in translation. Fortunately, Paul Reynolds, a director at Auckland-based
consultancy McGovern & Associates, who contributed some of the most
forward-thinking insights to the deep dive (including this blog entry's title), articulated his own thoughts on his
blog, McGovern Online. I’ll give you an excerpt, but I would encourage you to
read the whole thing by clicking here:

Context - putting it all together.

The connecting point to all this is context - and for me,
that's where the future lies - not so much creating new content streams [though
that is an inevitable part of the mix] but creating new contextual tools and
spaces - which in turn give me the framework[s], to interact and rearrange my
relationships between one kind of media and another, and, crucially, integrate
these content relationships with the different social groups of friends,
colleagues and family who share all this with me.

For example - if I've totally enjoyed a new movie in the family area - say Pans Labyrinth - I'd like to
see a layer, either on the DVD, or more likely the web, that switches to a
deeper set on linked sourses on the Spanish Civil
War, or the History of Fayriae,
etc. I also want to share this with the people I saw the movie with.

Similarly, if I'm in a study space, I want to be able to switch out of the space
I'm in and see how current news or other media is treating what I have been
studying. Or maybe, all I'm doing is responding to an IMS, or a skype call.

Or, if I'm in the noisy eating/chattering space of the living room, I want to
be able to pull up all manner of local happenings reviews, restaurants etc, as
well as mark some stuff for quieter times in the study area.

In short the changing context of my life is matched by an equally intelligent
context machine which is able to scan the surface of an issue - flood it with
group noise and opinion, or take a step back, quieted down, and be able to take
the time to sit and think with some serious sources.

Here’s the lead sentence to the WSJ article: “The Bush
administration is preparing to take its longstanding spat with China over
pirated movies, music and books to the World Trade Organization, a move that
could notch up trade tensions between the two countries.”

It is a battle that is being fought on many levels, and with
varying degrees of success. And in many cases, industry and government are not
working together to solve the problem, which obviously isn’t helping. Again from the WSJ article:

“Industry groups that aren't expected to support the case
include the Business Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft
Corp. and Apple
Inc., and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug
industry's main trade group. Both sectors have made their own market-access and
antipiracy advances and don't want to see that work disturbed, administration
and industry officials said.”

Maybe looking for a silver bullet for the piracy problem is
too much to ask for. But it doesn’t hurt to ask.

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Comments

an obsession with "piracy" won't help contextualise the vast changes in media and authority patterns we're facing. the WSJ gets its panties in a twist about piracym, sure. but innovation is not coming from the media companies or "software publishers" that love copyright and DRM. have you blogged about the creative commons yet?

Dan, I've been pushing the notion that if content is KING then Context is the KINGDOM for quite some time. My reasoning there was that the Kingdom is the context within which the king operates. I like the analogy to the queen too though ; )

Here’s the lead sentence to the WSJ article: “The Bush administration is preparing to take its longstanding spat with China over pirated movies, music and books to the World Trade Organization, a move that could notch up trade tensions between the two countries.”